Kathleen Parker Sounds Reasonable. This Time She's Dead Right.

In the acknowledge-also-when-they're-right department, I commend Kathleen Parker for her op-ed today about whether Obama's actions were right in the case of Bowe Bergdahl. More like this one, Ms. Parker.

Attempting to Move Away From Snark (Hard!)

Where do you go after Ted Cruz wins the 2016 straw poll at RLC?

Ted Cruz, exceptionally talented McCarthyite, is a leading candidate for the Republican nominee for president in 2016. This is why it's so hard to move away from snark.

Snark lets us process nonsense in the least destructive way. What do I mean? Imagine Ted Cruz as president. See? Brains explode. That's why snark.

Give me reality or give me death. Or I'll just wait for Rick Santorum to enter the race. (You mean he left?)

Holy crap.

I forgot! Look at this headline:

Ted Cruz Edges Out Ben Carson In 2016 Straw Poll

Yes, that Ben Carson.

Ted Cruz. Frontrunner.

Bowe Bergdahl (Possibly) Did Something Stupid and Got Captured. Why Didn't We Just Wait Until He Was Beheaded?

Bergdahl walked away from his post one night. We don't know what happened.
So why didn't we let him rot when we exit combat in Afghanistan later this year?

Patriots don't cut and run. They wait for their comrades to get beheaded.

Or, in the alternative, we get our men and women home, and then investigate. If Bergdahl did something wrong, we could imprison him for another five years. Why didn't I think of that?

Or we could release him for time served. Or, at least, make him do community service in the Duck Dynasty! Justice must be served!

On the other hand, here is Jonathan Capehart's reasoned take on this.

And, all snark aside, Bergdahl's case is complicated. I land on the side of finding out what happened first. Oh, and yeah, Afghanistan is a country you can't defeat. So how many lives, on both sides, were lost because revenge?

Turns out this is really complicated. Here's a good explanation. Here's a good editorial questioning the deal. Here's one by WaPo, which can generally be counted on to be boneheaded, but this one is surprisingly rational. A couple of paragraphs worth flagging. I toss in some boldface:

The administration’s answers to these critiques are only partially satisfying. It says it did not negotiate with terrorists, since the exchange was brokered through Qatar and not directly with the Taliban. Sgt. Bergdahl and the Taliban commanders, officials add, were prisoners of war, not hostages. Probably the president’s lawyers are correct in saying that the Constitution gives Mr. Obama the authority to carry out such exchanges; a signing statement he attached to the Guantanamo legislation asserts as much. Moreover, administration officials say they were obliged to move quickly because of concern about Sgt. Bergdahl’s health.

Still, the impression reinforced by the deal is of a president anxious to disengage from Afghanistan as rapidly and as thoroughly as possible, with minimal regard for the consequences for Afghans. U.S. officials, who have been talking about a possible exchange of Sgt. Bergdahl for the Taliban commanders for several years, once presented it as a possible first step toward an Afghan peace accord. However, administration officials now play down that notion, and the Taliban dismissed it out of hand.

The first bolded statement rings true to me. It matters not that Congress passed a law if it transgressed on presidential powers, as this appears to have. The president has the right and the power to act.

The second bolded statement strikes me as the usual bullshit: Obama has struck a deal that "reinforces an impression." That's the same thing as a statement in an ad that says "Listerine has been proven to contribute to the prevention of gum disease." So does water. Go ahead and use Listerine, and go ahead and foster "an impression." It means next to nothing.

Finally, the Newsweek article I linked to makes clear that the five Taliban being released are bad actors, but they are in fact state actors. With the Afghan War winding down, we were going to have to make a decision about releasing POWs. With these, now we don't have to, and we don't run the risk of having to illegally detain people we can't convict. That's what's so depressing about Guantanamo. It's illegal, and it show America's worst face. It can't be closed fast enough. Bring people to justice, or let them go.

Guantanamo Bay: a perpetual bad PR operation.
It says, over and over, America the terrible.

I Resent the Misery We Went Through Because John McCain Was a Crappy Pilot

Dude couldn't fly very well. Crashed three times, also had a "clowning
incident" in Spain. We let him run for president? Should have left him
in Vietnam. Can't believe we accepted his release. Coward. (McCain, front right.)

Of course I don't believe in the title of this post -- though McCain's piloting skills are subject to a bit of WTF. And I don't mean a word of the caption to the photo, either. By all accounts, John McCain's years in captivity were total misery, and he conducted himself with valor.

That's why it's the height of idiocy for Republicans to put up a stink because the U.S., on behalf of a U.S. POW, negotiated a prisoner swap to bring him home. No, Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl should have suffered more, and we should have only been willing to trade Afghan candy venders for him. Trading enemy combatants for another enemy combatant, negotiating with terrorists, who does that shit? Hint: Israel.

Republicans know in their hearts that getting POWs back is a low priorty, and John McCain is first among them.

It's depressing these days. Polarization has gone way too far. McCain, you put lives at risk with your shitty piloting. Wish you had spent years more paying for the danger Americans had to go through. Guess you were lucky, though. You were a POW when Democrats STFU and welcomed you back.

Sort out the assholes. McCain was one of them, and Ted Cruz, by the way, was "disturbed."

Patriots.

Kathleen Parker Sounds Reasonable. Why, Then, Is She Wrong?

I could have just said, "Good luck, Michelle Obama, healthy lunches is
a good idea, but where's the fun in that?

In WaPo syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker's latest tome, she takes on what's wrong with Michelle Obama's Let's Move! teenage health initiative. Parker's thrust here is that advocating for healthy school lunches is nice and all -- "Don't get me wrong" -- it's just fascist -- "Which I don't actually believe, but gastro-fascism is a cool term." I'm paraphrasing here, but getting straight to the sub-text. Parker means to declare that having a good idea is great, but don't do it all or you risk being ineffective at best and openly mocked and condemned at worst.

This is classic conservative concern trolling here; like all "reasonable" conservatives, she doesn't want Michelle Obama to succeed in a vital job even though she admires her for her efforts. Parker is also saying "Americans are too stupid to live, anyway." Their kids will throw out the healthy lunches because they don't taste good. So why bother?

But, as is often the case with mammoth federal programs, one size does not fit all. Many school districts have inadequate funding to meet the new nutrition standards and have had to borrow from educational programs, in some cases shutting them down.

Moreover, the kids detest the food and are tossing their lunches, so to speak, into the dumpster. Some school districts report having to purchase or lease more trash cans to accommodate the extra garbage, increasing their waste-collection costs as well.

Hence the "why bother?" rhetoric. Thanks, Michelle, but the kids are going to throw your good intentions in the dumpster.

Wait, there's more. Parker gets to the place that all the concern-trolling conservative pundits go -- yep, I'm talking to you Ross Douthat and David Brooks -- and that's "if the parents loved their kids we wouldn't need the federal government to handle the loving." Awwwh, how sweet...

We can’t all have a chef or send our children to private schools with meatier lunches, as the Obamas do. But we can feed our children for less trouble and money than some think. Maybe the first lady can modify her message along with our menus: Cook for your kids and they’ll grow smart and strong.

Not to get too carried away, but food, you know, is love.

Like I said, how sweet. Here's the deal, though, soul-sister Parker: TONS OF PARENTS SEND THEIR KIDS TO SCHOOL HUNGRY AND WITHOUT LUNCH MONEY OR A BAGGED LUNCH. There, you made me shout.

Federal lunch programs don't exist by accident. They fill a gaping hole, and making them more healthy isn't a matter of "compromise on the tortillas and the fried chicken for fuck's sake." I've spent years teaching in public schools and watched kids eat gargantuan cinnamon rolls dripping with white-sugar frosting at morning break, later watching the same kids have a slice of pizza and a large fries and Coke for lunch. And these are the kids with the lunch money. For the rest, it's "Don't let 'em eat cake," except that here's where the federal lunch program comes in.

Kathleen Parker knows exactly why she feels better after lunch because she knows how to buy a healthy salad so you don't have a monster sugar crash an hour later.

It's just more of that good-for-me-but-not-for-thee attitude copping with a dash of if-the-poors-won't-feed-their kids-then-why-should-we? It's a love thing, don't you know? No, it's moralizing concern-trolling, and it's utter bullshit dressed in I-don't-feel-this-way-but-if-the-poor-can't-get-out-of-bed-then-why-should-blah-blah-blah.

So their kids are healthy and become better learners, Parker. It ain't rocket science, true, but it does take compassion, something moralizers rarely have in sufficient supply.

Wait a minute: The peaches in sugar syrup, that's fruit, right?
And the 1% chocolate milk is low fat, right? Okay, then!

Note on how editorial boards work their schtick. Kathleen Parker's actual article is entitled "Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move!’ goes too far." The tease title on the front page is "Michelle Obama's disastrous program." Nowhere in Parker's op-ed does she imply in the slightest that the program is a disaster. Somebody, a Fred Hiatt or one of his minions, decided, let's put Michelle Obama and disaster in the same sentence. So there! Sheesh... (I did a little bit of that, too, calling one of Hiatt's assistants a "minion." See how that works?)

Hey, Putin, You Can Shove Your Soyuz

This probably was part of the dynamic of diplomacy all along. Now Elon Musk makes it official:

Reminder to people who may have forgotten: The U.S. has, since the Space Shuttle was retired, used the Russian Soyuz capsules and rockets to participate in the International Space Station. Putin has recently threatened to end that cooperation. Sorry, Vlad, you can keep your Soyuz, and drop out of the space station program if you want. You are no longer vital. Pwned!

I Like My Glenn Greenwald Undaunted and Relentless

Greenwald understands that the truth trumps power
unless you or someone else don't let it.

By way of introduction to my thoughts on the recent mainstream journalistic condemnation of Glenn Greenwald and his unrelenting campaign to let truth be the antiseptic it can be when brave people are unbowed, I've long understood why this sort of thing -- even among the so-called liberal press -- might happen, especially in DC. It's changed how I view journalism, and it didn't start yesterday.

When I came back in 1990 from Japan where I'd lived for several years, I developed viewing habits driven by my growing obsession with politics. I really did undergo a kind of tectonic shift. I wasn't uninterested in politics before, I simply didn't make it what I did with my time.

Then I started watching Washington Week with Paul Duke, and one or two of the Sunday morning shows. I especially liked Cokie Roberts, I confess, and I even admit to admiring David Broder. I suspect there was still a lot to admire about Broder at the time. He hadn't begun his long slide into embarrassing irrelevance.

But the point was that all the elite Washington reporters impressed me, and I waited each week to have them shape or fine-tune my opinions. I trusted them that much. I suspect, as I said, that they were more relevant in those days.

At some point -- I recall it was about the time Gwen Ifill took over Washington Week -- the group of elite reporters, among them John Harwood, John Harris, Elizabeth Bumiller, Jackie Calmes, etc., just started to seem to espouse opinions as if they were in some infinite loop, laughing at their own insights, smarmy in their elitism. I got it. They played by inside-the-Beltway rules and maintained access.

Frankly, I began to yell at the TV; even my wife was thinking of having me banned from the living room. I relented eventually, and we both solved the problem. Fridays were no longer about the politcal wrap-up shows. They were about good food, good wine, good company, and maybe some Netflix thrown in toward the end.

The same thing eventually happened with our Sunday viewing. We reduced it to web replays of ABC's This Week. I just wanted to hear what the mainstreamers were selling. Eventually, though, just how much of Peggy Noonan saying "My sense of this is..." can a sentient being take? Now we don't even watch that anymore.

I might as well throw in that I was a big fan of Slate in the early days when Michael Kinsley was Editor-in-Chief. I admired his insight and his sly humor. Watching him turn into a snide asshole over the last few years has been painful.

So when it comes to this Greenwald bashing -- with Kinsley leading the way by proclaiming in a review of Greenwald's latest book that we should listen to the government and only print what they say we can, and that, further, it's possible to view a Glenn Greenwald as a criminal for conducting fearless journalism -- the background for my reaction is that I've long since given up thinking that the elite press of Washington and even New York can be trusted anymore. There were many reasons for this shift over the years, a chief example being Tom Friedman's endorsement of the Iraq War on Charlie Rose  with his famous Suck. On. This. comment. I haven't been able to read him much ever since.

And so it is with the rest of the mainstream political press. There still are good ones -- sad to say one of the Greenwald bashers, Jonathan Chait, I thought was among them -- worth listening to. But we may be at the point of some Great Churning, where the real journalists with real spine start to emerge, and the old guard, some hiding in new-guard's clothing, start their long slide into irrelevance. It's a pity.

I've been reading Greenwald since his very early days on his blog, Unclaimed Territory -- here's an example, he's not an overnight sensation -- and I hung through a lot of interminable blog posts at Salon, god the guy can run on, but I always valued his insight, his tenacity, and his integrity.

Would that these clowns who condemn him now had the spine to even be in the same league with him. Let the Great Churning begin. Time to get out the buckets and clean up the scum.

Michael Kinsley: When does integrity become a liability? When it threatens access.